


shaping up, shipping out

by espinosas



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: And a lot of berries, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-26
Updated: 2017-05-26
Packaged: 2018-11-05 06:06:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11007543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/espinosas/pseuds/espinosas
Summary: Jesus and Daryl, berries, books and babies.





	shaping up, shipping out

**Author's Note:**

> Sav asked for art or a fic of tooth-rotting fluff with Daryl and Jesus, and this is my take on it.
> 
> Also, I only skimmed this for typos and didn't check properly so I apologise if you see anything outrageous. Title is from Vance Joy's Mess is Mine.

This thing that they have, it swallows him up. Rids his lungs of air, floods his veins, grips him by the throat. Threatens to rip his heart from his ribs. Its like he’s drowning, like he’s delved in water that each heaving breath he forces himself to take only serves to make his chest ache something sweet.

He can't really remember not having Daryl in his life. Can't remember what not feeling like this every second of his life felt like. He’s not entirely sure if that’s a good thing; probably not, though it doesn’t help to diminish the fact that his pulse shot up every time Daryl so much as touched him.

He was asleep beside Jesus; a permanent warmth at his side, a reminder, an anchor. His hair, made up of imperfect burnished wisps, framed his head on the pillow. The tell-tale signs of dusk filtered through shutters, journeyed Daryl’s torso, strips of light accentuating red and purple left hours earlier. They stuck out, like ink on a page, a darkened constellation, enticed him into tracing with shaking fingertips.

Daryl doesn't stir.

They’d been staying together for a while, at Hilltop.

Daryl’s actual, proper moving in had happened in such a gradual manner neither of them had hardly realised. The archer had already been staying at the trailer before and during the war with the Saviours, at Maggie’s request.

 _Help me win_.

He’d leave belongings here and there that Jesus had assumed he’d forgotten, left misplaced, filling the void Jesus hadn’t known existed. The jacket he’d worn to Oceanside that time still hung on the back of one of chairs at the table. The bandanna he’d stolen (previously Jesus’) hung next to his leather coat. His crossbow sat in the same space each time he would stay the night, or several.

It’d been nothing short of natural.

The room melded into theirs as easily as the two of them melded into an _us_.

Maggie had moved into Barrington house after the war, maybe by a month or so, residing in the office, comfortable in the position that Gregory never held. Daryl flitted between Alexandria and Hilltop at first. He’d stay in the trailer when he was at Hilltop, they’d share Jesus’ too-small clothes, eat from the seemingly unlimited pile of canned fruit and whatever poor animal Daryl had caught and ignore everything between the lines neither was brave enough to speak aloud.

Then Maggie had invited him to stay permanently.

And his gloves had joined the drawers of clothes, vest rested on the end of the couch he slept on, bolts in the pouch slung above the bed that Jesus’ knives resided in.

“What ye thinkin’ about?”

Jesus didn’t stop in his movements, index encircling ridged flesh at Daryl’s hip. He hummed, soft.

Daryl was watching him, brows pulled together in response to the light Jesus wasn't quite blocking, eyes in slits. Had probably been watching him for a while, observing, admiring. Daryl’s hand found the inner of his arm, encircling a wound-turned-scar that made his skin ache in tenderness, goosebumps following the calloused digit’s trail.

He smiled down at the redneck, something lazy and slow and bright. “Mostly yourself.”

“Mostly?”

“Asshole.” Jesus laughed something airy. “I don’t know, I was thinking about when you first got here. After the kingdom.”

Daryl’s lips pulled up; it wasn't quite a smile, but maybe that was down to the edge of sleep that still had a grasp on him.

Jesus’ smile spread, skin around his eyes creased in rare serenity.

“What time s’it?”

“Six, give or take.” The scout groaned then, tilting his head back to read the clock on the far wall. His finger teased the tattoo on Daryl’s breastbone. “Go back to sleep.”

“Maybe.” The older man lasted a minute or two out of admirable willpower before dropping his head back onto the pillow, hair sticking out at every possible angle. Jesus snorted, willing the time to freeze over, throwing an arm around Daryl’s middle.

*

 “So Harry’s in Hufflepuff?”

Jesus maneuvered his back further against Daryl’s chest, thumb in between pages forty and forty-one, the spine splitting, other hand resting on his lap. The archer’s arm was around his waist, the pressure of his fingers on his hip pulling warmth up to the area.

Daryl’s forehead rested on Jesus’ shoulder blade, flesh soft beneath his cranium.

“Nope, Gryffindor.” Jesus’ shoulder shook as he chuckled to himself, soft, lips pulled back into a grin. “But you’re learning so creds to you.” He turned the page and began to read again, just above a whisper.

Daryl’s knee dug into the small of his back, just below the line of uncomfortable, and his hair tickled the skin of his neck just enough for perspiration to form but he didn’t mind. Welcomed it, even. There’d been a substantial chunk of their relationship in which Daryl wouldn’t so much as touch his hand without freaking out. They were a work in progress, both of them, he’d discovered. Jesus had had trouble with committing to something without giving into the burning pressure to run the fuck away from it since he first entered that home, with trusting someone, with fucking pulling at the innards of his vulnerability and giving another soul access to the complicated vining of every fucking intricacy even he barely knew or accepted.

Daryl must have realised he was in deep thought, prying the book from Jesus’ grasp and setting it on the comforter. Jesus smiled, something private and small, and entirely to himself. His fingers found Daryl’s, pulled them from his hip, turned to press a kiss to his jaw.

Daryl’s face tinged red but he didn’t pull away. Jesus sat up as Daryl stood from the bed. “Promised I’d go help Maggie with her gardenin’.”

Jesus’ hand, still around Daryl’s squeezed a little. He dropped it to mock-glare up at the older man. “Fine, leave me all alone in here. By myself.”

“Ass.” Daryl picked up his vest from the back of the chair closest to the bed. “She’s checking to see if the plants are ripe or not.”

“Strawberries?”

Daryl snorted, turning back to look at the scout. “Yea, diggin’ up all the veg too probably, had me pulling the tarp off few days ago.”

He looked out of the window to the forage outside, sun bleeding strips of warmth across his skin. He looked back at Daryl, hidden in the shade of the trailer, hair tucked behind his ears. “Fine. You had me sold at berries.”

*

Daryl sat on the top of the bench, facing the gardens and therefore Jesus on the edge of the seat and Maggie. In his hand, fresh berries, a rarity, and a luxury usually reserved for the children of the community, before Jesus had quote unquote borrowed some (a lot) from their leader in thanks for the help.

Hershel cooed at the plush bear in Maggie’s other hand, his mouth around the ear as he gurgled quietly to himself. Maggie pressed a kiss to the side of his head.

She looked back at Jesus, squinting. “You really used t’ be a vegetarian then?”

Jesus bit into his lip. “For the shortest time in history ever, yeah. I think it was like… eight months before I caved into the pull of bacon.” He groaned in exaggeration. “You know what I’d give for a full English breakfast right now?”

“Don’t.” Daryl threw a handful of berries to the back of his mouth. “Wish we could just make burgers again.”

“I mean, you _could_ always ask Bertie for her veggie alternatives.”

Daryl didn’t blink. “Fuck off, Paul.”

“Adorable.” Maggie commented. Jesus snorted. “What have broccoli and spinach ever done to you?”

“Disgust me is what, shit’s repulsive.”

Jesus laughed into his hand, muffled, not really hidden.

Maggie’s head tilted, cap wobbling with unease atop her head. She grinned. “He ever tell you about the time he ate a worm?”

Jesus sat up at that. “Protein, and you were all “starvin’”, as far as I recall?” He shot Hershel a smile when he looked from behind Maggie’s shoulder to the bench. “Sasha told me when we were waiting for you to wake up.”

 Maggie showed no struggle with his mention of her, eyes shining. “’Course she did. Pretty sure she’d had her fair share of shit she regretted then, too.”

None of them spoke, and Jesus’ gaze flitted over to the back of his trailer where he knew the three graves were. The flowers seemed just a little brighter.

After a pregnant pause, “Might just kill one of these cows anyway. Can get plenty of burgers from it.”

Jesus knocked into his calf with an elbow, rolling his eyes. He looked back to Hershel, bear forgotten, his sole focus on his mother, pawing at her shoulder. She stroked at his hair, conversation paused. It was a fortunate sight, to Jesus. This family, his sister and leader, the miracle each of them treasured that she held so dear to her chest, back-dropped by the very house that she led them through a war in, twice over, it meant the world to him.

He looked back up to Daryl, face framed by light. It didn’t make him look younger, no, not innocent either. He knew a blade resided in each of his shoes, another at his waist, watched him put them there as soon as he dressed, a lifeline.

It was a funny thing, how the light seemed to hit his face at the right angles, always. Eased each stretch of skin, by his eyes, between his brows, breaching his mouth at each end; filled them with liquid serenity. It licked at the sheen of sweat that clung to skin, smoothed down the edges, made the red in his palms look that much sweeter, the apple of Eve.

He didn’t even realise, he couldn’t, how much a contradiction he was. Every part of him radiated hardship, struggle, loss, perseverance, strength, willpower, family, all hidden beneath skin as punctured as it was dangerous. Beneath hands, that held screaming youth as easily as the neck of a bow. Beneath a mouth that unearthed pleasure that, in the same day, could hurl out bitterness capable of breaking a man.

Corresponding; the night was the silent showcase of this beautiful contradiction of a man, the air, calm and gentle, whipped around him in ease. His ageing stuck out, then. The leftover exhaustion from the wars that he’d never managed to rid of. A cigarette always between fingers, an arm to curl under, a shoulder to lean into.

He picked at the diminishing collection of berries in the archer’s palm, pushed a strawberry into his mouth and revelled at the taste. He leaned into Daryl’s side as he chewed, the older man bringing an arm to rest on his shoulder. Maggie smiled, bright and serene, beneath her cap, Hershel’s toy at her feet and her son drooling on a berry of his own.

Jesus smiled back, close-mouthed, before allowing his eyes to slip shut, the remnants of sweetness lingering on his tongue.


End file.
